CCC engineers receive training on intersection design

The World Resources Institute (WRI) organised a day-long capacity-building workshop for the engineers of Chattogram City Corporation (CCC) titled 'Collaborative Design Learning'.

CCC acting CEO Khaled Mahmud inaugurated the workshop on Tuesday (3 October) at the conference hall of CCC, said a press release.

CCC has partnered with the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) to reduce deaths and injuries from crashes on its streets. As a partner of this program, WRI supports cities in developing safe streets and safe mobility across different geographies and contexts. In this workshop, WRI focused on the importance of intersections and the design process.

In the inauguration session, acting CEO Khaled Mahmud said, "Road crashes can be caused due to various reasons such as faulty roads, traffic disorder, road user's unawareness etc. Today's workshop will discuss designing faultless roads, which will help our engineers to build safer roads in the future."

CMP Additional Commissioner (Traffic) Engineer Abdul Mannan Mia said all the stakeholders must work together to ensure safe roads for everyone.

Mentioning that police officers work on the road to maintain traffic flaws and ensure safe roads, he said, "The exchange of experience of engineers with policemen would play an important role in designing faultless roads."

At the beginning of the workshop, Kazi Shifun Newaz, surveillance coordinator, BIGRS Chattogram delivered a presentation on the road safety context of the city. Then WRI assistant consultant Arina Tahneem narrated the role of intersections to the participants. Finally, WRI consultant Farzana Islam Toma shared the design process with the engineers. She mentioned, 'Intersections play a major role in road safety as it is the major conflicting location for users, especially pedestrians who are very high in number and most vulnerable, which leads to higher road crashes at intersections. Proper design of intersections is very necessary to enable an efficient and safer mobility system.'

WRI team also discussed how to test the design temporarily before a permanent execution. After the lectures, a practice session was also held where the participants designed an intersection based on their learning. 

Executive engineers, assistant engineers and sub-assistant engineers from the Civil Department of CCC, and police officers from CMP's traffic division participated in the workshop. Among others, CCC Superintendent Engineer Shahin-ul Islam Chowdhury, BIGRS Chattogram Initiative Coordinator Mr. Labib Tazone Utshab, Enforcement Coordinator Quazi Helal Uddin, and Communication Officer Mahamudul Hasan were present at the event.